Famous Migrants and descendents of Migrants

Greatest physicist of the twentieth century. Born in Ulm, Germany, the young Einstein was dissatisfied with the restrictive schools in Germany. At the age of 16 he moved to Switzerland and graduated from the Federal Institute of Technology. In 1902 he became a clerk with Swiss Patent Office, where he worked with new inventions. In 1905 he published five papers, including the “Special theory of Relativity” which considered motion and the speed of light. The devastation of World War I caused Einstein to become an active pacifist. In 1916 he published his “General Theory of Relativity,” a concept of a curved universe and its affect on light. In 1922 he won the Nobel Prize for Physics. While visiting America in 1933 the Nazi party came to power in Germany and Einstein renounced his German citizenship for a second time. He chose to stay in America, accepting a position at Princeton University.

During World War II, Einstein knew the Germans were working on the atomic bomb. He advised President Roosevelt of the dangers of the bomb in Nazi control. He appreciated that the United States had to develop it first, but begged Roosevelt not to use it. Einstein spent the rest of his life working for peace and died in 1955. Source

Gillard was born in 1961 in Barry, Wales, United Kingdom.[3] After she suffered from bronchopneumonia as a child, her parents were advised it would aid her recovery if they were to live in a warmer climate.[7] The family migrated to Australia in 1966, settling in Adelaide.[8] Her parents, John and Moira, live in Pasadena, South Australia.[9] She has a sister, Alison, who is three years older.

Gillard became the Deputy Prime Minister upon Labor’s victory in the 2007 federal election, also serving as Minister for Education, Employment and Workplace Relations. On 24 June 2010, after Rudd lost the support of his party and stood aside, Gillard became federal leader of the Australian Labor Party and thus the Prime Minister,[4] the first female holder of the office.

Our former Secretary of State, Madeleine Albright was born in Czechoslovakia in 1937 and moved with her family, the Korbels, to the United States in 1948, fleeing the Communist takeover. She graduated from Wellesley College with honors in Political Science, and received her master’s degree and doctorate from Columbia University’s Department of Public Law and Government. Secretary Albright served as a staff member on the National Security Council, a Senior Fellow at the Center for Strategic Studies, a professor at Georgetown University, President of the Center for National Policy and, finally, as the U.S. Permanent Representative to the United Nations before being unanimously confirmed by the U.S. Senate in January 1977 as Secretary of State. She is the first female Secretary of State and the highest-ranking woman in the U.S. government. Source

Joseph Pulitzer:

This son of a Jewish father and Catholic mother was born in Hungary in 1847 and attended private schools in Budapest until age 17. His weak eyesight prevented him from joining the Austrian Army; however, he did make his way to America to join the Union Army during the Civil War. Later he found work in St. Louis where he came to the attention of two editors of a German language paper. They hired him, and the ambitious Pulitzer made the most of the opportunity. A few years later, Pulitzer had a controlling interest in the ailing paper, and by the age of 25 he was a publisher. A series of deals made him owner of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. He married in 1878 and became a member of the city’s social elite. Pulitzer’s paper gained favor among the public for exposing corruption and tax dodgers. His purchase of The New York World, and his brilliance in marketing, including raising public subscriptions for building a pedestal for the Statue of Liberty so it could be shipped from France, made him the publisher of the best-selling newspaper in the country. He also set standards for editorial excellence. His success, as well as his keen involvement in every aspect of the paper, led to further weakening of his eyesight and his health in general. In 1904 he wrote in The North American Review, “Our Republic and its press will rise or fall together.” Pulitzer died in 1911, leaving as his greatest legacy an annual series of journalistic awards, the Pulitzer Prizes. Source

Martina Navratilova

Another world-class immigrant athlete, Martina Navratilova , excelled in the sport of tennis. Born in Revnice, near Prague, Czechoslovakia in 1956, Navratilova defected to the United States in 1975, shortly after winning her first professional singles title in Orlando, Florida. She became a U.S. citizen in 1981. Navratilova is a former World No. 1 women’s tennis player. At the age of 15, she won the Czechoslovakian national tennis championship, and then turned professional the following year. Source

Ang Lee:

Ang Lee, a New York-based, Taiwan-born independent producer, director and screenwriter who won “Best Director” in the 2005 Academy Award (“Brokeback Mountain“). Lee gained international attentions with his ”Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon” (2000)–an Kung Fu epic which married two genres—historical romance and martial arts. He was also the producer and director of “The Wedding Banquet” (1993)– Described by one of its producers as “a cross-cultural, gay ‘Green Card’, comedy of errors,” this gentle, observant comedy strove to recreate the plot structure of an old Hollywood screwball comedy while confronting issues of Taiwanese identity. “ Some of his other films include: “Hulk” (2003), “Sense and Sensibility” (1995), and “Eat Drink Man Woman” (1994). While studying at NYU in the early 1980’s, Ang Lee was a classmate of Spike Lee (a well-known African-American Writer, Producer and Director) and have worked on Spike’s “Joe’s Bed-Stuy Barber Shop: We Cut Heads” (1982, as assistant to cinematographer Ernest Dickerson). Source

Arnold Schwarzenegger – Governor of California

Photo: Win McNamee/Getty Images Popular for his role as “The Terminator,” this 2-time Golden Globe nominee and 7-time winner of the Mr. Olympia bodybuilding competition has proved to be a successful politician as the governor of California.

Levi Strauss – Founder of Levi Strauss & Co.

On February 26, 1829, Levi Strauss was born in Buttenheim, Bavaria to German-Jewish parents. In 1845, Levi’s father died, and his two older brothers left to join the Jewish community in New York City. Two years later, Levi, with his mother and two sisters, joined the brothers.

After a brief stint at his uncle’s ranch in Kentucky, Levi became an American citizen in 1853 and moved to San Francisco to take advantage of the California Gold Rush. There, he set up a small dry-goods house with brother-in-law David Stern. Levi responded to the miners’ needs for a sturdy pant that would survive the rough mining conditions, and started making denim fabric.

The business became known as “Levi Strauss & Co.” and by 1870, Levi was a millionaire. Source

Sergey Brin – Google Co-Founder

Sergey Brin was born August 21, 1973 in Moscow, Russia. Institutional anti-Semitism drove Sergey’s highly-educated parents to begin the process of exiting the country. The Brin family, including Sergey, his parents and his father’s mother, was granted exit visas to leave the former Soviet Union in May 1979. Five months later, they arrived in New York and settled shortly thereafter in Maryland.

Sergey received his undergraduate degree from the University of Maryland in mathematics and computer science. A National Science Foundation scholarship allowed him to pursue graduate studies at Stanford University.

At Stanford, Sergey met fellow graduate student Larry Page, and in January 1996 the two friends started a research project which eventually became Google, Inc. Source

Deepak Chopra is a world-renowned authority in the field of mind-body healing, a best-selling author, and the founder of the Chopra Center for Wellbeing. Heralded by Time Magazine as the “poet-prophet of alternative medicine,” he is also the host of the popular weekly Wellness Radio program on Sirius/XM Stars. Read here

A collection of articles and resources about famous and notable immigrants who came to the Unites States to make their mark.

In Film, TV and Theater (32) In the Culinary Arts (1) In Politics/Law/Gov (7) In the Field of Dance (2) In Publishing or Media (12) In the Music World (17) In Sports (11) In the Sciences (9) In the Business World (8) In the Visual Arts (11)

This morning I was listening to BBC news on Astro TV while shaving.
I heard Former Defence Secretary (Defence Minister) and Director of CIA (the Central Intelligence Agency) Mr.Leon Panetta talking at the DNC (Democratic National Convention) supporting the nominating of Mrs. Clinton as the President.

I was deeply moved by his words asking the delegates and Americans to continue giving chance for “American Dreams”.

He mentioned that he is the son of Italian Migrant who opened a Restaurant in California. He revealed that he remembered that he had to stand on a chair and wash the dishes. He said that his parents even never dreamed that their migrant child would someday become a Defence Secretary of US.

Leon Panetta was born in Monterey, California, the son of Carmelina Maria and Carmelo Frank Panetta, Italian immigrants from Siderno in Calabria who owned 7 restaurants in the Monterey area.

Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for Transport and Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Minister for Countering Extremism)
Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon
Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon
Contents
Biography
Roles
Previous roles
Policies
Announcements
Biography
Lord Ahmad was appointed Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for Transport and Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for Home Office in May 2015.

Education
He was educated at Rutlish School and London South Bank University (LSBU) as well as the Chartered Institute of Financial Services.

Political career
Lord Ahmad was appointed as a Lord’s Whip in September 2012 for:

Home Office
Ministry of Justice
Universities
Science
He is a Conservative member of the House of Lords. Lord Ahmad was raised to the peerage in 2011 and served as a party whip before being appointed to government. He was vice-chairman of the Conservative Party between 2008 and 2010 with responsibility for cities. He also served as a Councillor (Wimbledon Park) and Cabinet Member in the London Borough of Merton between 2002 to 2012.

Career outside politics
Lord Ahmad spent 20 years working in banking and finance, including at the NatWest Group where he was a senior manager in corporate banking and financial markets. He was later vice-president and Marketing Director of Alliance Bernstein and Strategy and Marketing Director at Sucden Financial.